CARTOON: Stitch By Bloody Stitch, The Muzzling Of U.S. Free Speech & Thought
Nothing threatens the creaky, fragile ego and false authority of vile tyrants and grifters more than the right of people to speak freely. Nothing.
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (4/12/25)
From a peaceful student snapped up and disappeared by masked ICE goons for the sin of co-writing a moderate opinion piece in a student newspaper critical of the obscene US/Israel genocide, to major law firms abandoning all principles to cut deals providing free legal services to the Trump regime, freedom of speech is being mugged and muzzled across the nation.
The First Amendment of OUR constitution is clear:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Not only is it a guarantee of free speech and the right to protest, it also protects both freedom of — and from — religion, something to keep in mind as Christian fascists ramp up a dark anti-Christian racist white nationalistic corporate theocracy.
There is a reason freedom of speech comes first in the Bill of Rights — without the freedom to speak and protest, your other rights cannot be protected. Free speech is the essence of the stated values of the nation. A value constantly under attack from post-Civil War reconstruction to the imprisonment of Eugene Debs for opposing US entry into WW I, to crackdowns on the labor and civil rights movements and the 1950s Red Scare.
And further, First Amendment free speech rights and protection belong to everyone in the United States — not just full citizens. Every person.
Why they fear free speech
The illegitimate, corporate power structure always opposes the right of citizens to speak freely; to challenge and call out corrupt norms, mock official hypocrisy and oppose injustice.
There is an important fact to remember in such a time: Nothing threatens the creaky, fragile ego and false authority of vile tyrants and grifters more than the right of people to speak freely. Nothing.
They are terrified of such freedom of thought among the rabble.
Especially if done with humor.
That fragility is the source of the latest feverish assault on our First Amendment right to free speech. Rather than a display of strength, with every shut down criticism, muzzled speaker and disappeared YouTube video the Trump and Zionist regimes reveal their weakness; their lack of any scrap of moral authority, legitimacy, justice or truth. The first video below is a prime example of how low they will go and how they expose their corrupt asses to the world.
Keep speaking, people. Don’t let the moral misfits silence your voice or your right to Free Speech. And please, mock them whenever you can. We have so much material to work with.
As an example, see and pass along “White POTUS”, below.
SYMPATHY FOR CHILDREN: Pro-Israel Group Levels Unhinged Smears Against Children’s YouTuber
Due Dissidence (4/12/25)
16-minute video
RED ALERT: Trump Is Coming After Me
The David Pakman Show (5/10/25)
An internal email suggests that a Trump-run government agency is specifically targeting David's book — The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America — for removal from Amazon.
8-minute video
ICE Says It Will Stop 'Ideas' From Crossing The Border Illegally
In a since-deleted social media post, the immigration enforcement agency declared itself the border thought police in a country that is supposed to believe in freedom of speech and thought.
By Paul Blumenthal
HuffPo (4/10/25)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared that its agents were diligently at work enforcing “400+ federal laws” to prevent the following from crossing “the border illegally”: people, money, products and ideas, in a post to social media site X that was deleted hours later on Thursday.
“Ideas?” you ask.
It appears that the country’s primary immigration enforcement agency has, at least briefly, declared itself the border thought police. In a country that is supposed to believe in the freedom of speech and thought, this raises a host of questions.
What ideas does ICE believe are illegal? How can ideas even cross the border illegally? And how does ICE screen for these illegal ideas to stop them from coming in?
ICE did not respond to these questions but did tell HuffPost that the “post was sent without proper approval and should not have been shared.”
″‘Ideas’ should have said ‘intellectual property,’” a spokesperson for ICE said in an email. …
UNITED STATES OF CENSORSHIP! Dept. Of Homeland Security Now Spying On Social Media Posts
By Glenn Greenwald
System Update (4/10/25)
6-minute video
SUPPRESSION: The State Department Has Revoked The Visas Of Over 600 Students At 100+ Schools
Some students were forced to leave the country after being sent a text message saying that their visas were cancelled.
By Zane McNeil
Truthout (4/10/25)
More than 100 colleges and universities across the country have reported cases of student visas being revoked by the U.S. State Department, with the department changing the legal status of over 600 international students and recent graduates, according to Inside Higher Ed.
“No president should be allowed to set an ideological litmus test and exclude or remove people from our country who they disagree with,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement.
“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterizing legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants.”
— Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Council on American-Islamic Relations National
Several universities have reported that some international students were forced to abruptly leave the United States after discovering — sometimes through a federal database, or via unexpected text messages or emails — that their visas had been canceled. Attorneys representing the affected students say that many lost their visas without any prior notice, explanation, or chance to respond. In many cases, university administrators were also left in the dark, receiving no formal explanation from federal immigration agencies.
Legal advocates say the Trump administration has increasingly revoked visas based on pro-Palestianian sentiment. While legal scholars affirm that international students are entitled to First Amendment protections, their temporary immigration status makes them especially vulnerable to punitive measures related to political speech.
“By surveilling visa and green card holders and targeting them based on nothing more than their protected expression, the administration trades America’s commitment to free and open discourse for fear and silence. Unfortunately, that chill appears to be the administration’s aim,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) wrote on X. …
SUPPRESSION: Trump Team Prepping New Strategy For False Accusations Of ‘Domestic Terrorism’
“The danger,” one senior intelligence official told us, is that the team preparing the strategy are all warfighters, seeing America as no different than the Middle East.
By Ken Kleppenstin
Ken Kleppenstein Substack (4/10/25)
The Trump administration is quietly drafting a bold new policy for combating terrorism that targets a wide range of perceived foes, from Tesla vandals to everyday protesters, intelligence sources say.
White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka is leading the rewrite, which covers both foreign and domestic strategies. Gorka recently boasted that the president has “done a 180 on our counterterrorism policy.” He’s also been quite candid in comparing his political opponents to terrorists, as I’ve written about.
The domestic focus derives from the view that foreign control, antisemitism and a conspiracy against Donald Trump are behind everything from Gaza protests to Planned Parenthood. White House insiders firmly believe that protestors are being “paid” to disrupt the Trump agenda, the same sources say.
“I think when they catch these people, you'll find they're paid by highly political people on the left," President Trump said last month. Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed the view, saying, of Tesla vandals: “If you're funding this, we're coming after you.”
Gorka and his team see America as a complex battlefield, where illegal immigrants, drug runners, sex traffickers, and money launderers have had free reign over the past four years. Now he wants to drop the hammer.
In an interview with Breitbart this week, Gorka decries “the feckless lack of leadership that was the Biden administration” when it came to dealing with those who threaten America or its allies.
To demonstrate its 180, the White House has already conducted strikes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia that it describes as more timely and intense than previously, long-identified potential attacks on “high value targets” that it claims were languishing on Biden drawing boards.
Gorka brags about the ease with which he and his team have gotten Donald Trump to change direction. …
90% Of ‘Worst of the Worst’ Migrants Sent To Mega Prison Had No U.S. Criminal Record
For the vast majority of deportees there was no information showing they committed any serious crimes in the U.S.
By Erkki Forster
Daily Beast (4/9/25)
Just a handful of the 238 migrants deported by the Trump administration to a mega prison in El Salvador actually have a criminal record, U.S. court records show—despite the White House’s insistence that they were dangerous criminals. President Donald Trump described the deportees—most of them Venezuelans—as a “bad group, when you look at the crimes they’ve committed.” But for 228 of them, there was no available information showing they committed any serious crimes in the U.S., according to Bloomberg. The migrants were deported without due process after Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a rarely used wartime law—alleging an “invasion” by members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. Despite the Trump administration’s claims of thorough vetting, press reports and legal filings have revealed that many deportees were judged to be gang-affiliated based on their tattoos and clothing. The administration has admitted to mistakenly deporting a father who had been granted legal refugee status, but have refused to bring him home. In a Monday ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s order that had temporarily halted the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act—but said detainees must be given notice and an opportunity to argue their case before a judge.
Gay Venezuelan Stylist Sent To Salvadoran Prison After A Disgraced Milwaukee Cop's Report — A disgraced former Milwaukee cop with credibility issues helped seal the fate of a gay Venezuelan makeup artist sent to El Salvador's notorious prison, according to documents reviewed by USA TODAY. A report approved by the police-officer-turned-prison-contractor claimed the Venezuelan man was a member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. But the credibility of Charles Cross, Jr., who signed the report, was so bad, prosecutors flagged him on a list of police who had been accused of lying, breaking the law or acting in a way that erodes their credibility to testify in Milwaukee County. … Link to story
SNL: The White Potus
Saturday Night Live (4/12/25)
5-minute video
“You’ve never been anything but firewood to keep the rich warm.”
— Shaheed Bolsen, The Decline Was the Plan: How the Global Elite Are Replacing America (4/10/25)
Online Comment…
“We don't need to "end" poverty, we don't need to "end" hunger, we don't need to "end" homelessness. We merely have to STOP CAUSING it intentionally.”
— @OlgaRykov
Chinese Government Meme On New Plus-Tariff Cost Of ‘Beautiful’ MAGA Hats
You outline how clearly the strategy is to silence whatever ‘they’ don’t like. Their humanity is disappearing with every greedy racist move. When will Trump appear in uniform? Noem is leading the way. Great cartoon Mark.
Your original cartoon... Ooo, it's almost too scary! Trump & co. are attempting to sew our mouths shut, but we're going to keep speaking out. The truth will set us free!
If you want to keep up with the latest on immigration news, check out Austin Kocher's Substack. His latest post is chilling: Trump is Quietly Building a Deportation Army out of State and Local Agencies https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/trump-is-quietly-building-a-deportation